


Pain

by Deadling



Category: Dead Things Series - Martina McAtee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 00:12:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17090396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deadling/pseuds/Deadling
Summary: Bartholomew was trapped in the ground for hundreds of years, and now he's free. Sort of.





	Pain

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fanfiction written for a contest put on for the dead things series by Martina McAtee! I hope you enjoyed it as I loved writing it for this wonderful fandom!

Peace was something that the living took for granted. The phrase “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” was thrown around like condolences, mostly meaningless and lacking any real heat. Frankly, “Rest in Peace bugged Bartholomew as well. How was he supposed to enjoy his grand hereafter in a coffin with his mind painfully active?

  
Over the centuries, Bartholomew had gotten used to the inability to do anything. He sat six feet underground, merely attempting not to go insane, a difficult and trying task.

  
The witch periodically thought of what he looked like as time passed and his body decomposed. He imagined his clothing was fragile and thin, though the lessened exposure to the elements offered some amount of preservation. His fingers permanently rested over his chest, crossed over one another. His skin must be translucent, bone visible through the very thing that once protected Bartholomew’s body, though he had no use for it anymore. Even though the goddess that put him in here had taken great care to ensure he’d stay on this plane, he’d turned into a apparition anyway.

  
When he was first put into the wooden contraption, the witch had a sense of the plush fabric that surrounded his body. The satin was soft, the position he held annoyed him but it was bearable, and the creaking of the box as dirt shifted around him was almost real. But, Bartholomew knew that these were just fantasies of a wretched soul’s desperate attempt to cling to any interaction with the world around him instead of facing the reality that he was forever condemned to be stuck between the living and the dead. He didn’t have a working heart or ears. He didn’t have nerve sensations. All Bartholomew had was his mind, forever stuck on the edge of consciousness.

  
When Bartholomew’s ability to keep track of the time diminished, he realized that he had been left here for all eternity, no hope of ever being forgiven for the horrible crimes he had committed. The only solace was that even though his heart was stopped, he didn’t need it to process emotion. And so the witch was able to rationally think through the decisions his coven made, inexcusable though they were.

  
Bartholomew had thought about what he’d done for every moment he’d been awake, and the voices in his head added to the conversation. As the witch laid there to rot, generations went by, affected by the coven’s decision. They decided to summon the Morrigan and forever changed the fate of the supernatural world in the pursuit of death magic.  
What Bartholomew estimated was the first one hundred years was filled with nothing except anger and resentment toward not only his coven members but also the people that could have stopped him. His wife that morning knew where the witch was going. Her anger was palpable as she stared at him with accusing eyes. She told Bartholomew that if he went through with this, she would leave him. He begged her to see the benefit of their future children having death magic, the very thing denied to them. They would battle their enemies in the name of justice, be able to save household pets, and defeat the mortality that in the end overcomes us all. In the end, she let him leave the house, letting his hands become splattered with blood. He soon found out how his mortality could be a joke even without magic.

  
Then, it was regret about the horror of the atrocities he committed that filled the essence of Bartholomew’s being. He, and eleven of the people he had been blood bonded to, created something that would last for what he expected to be forever. The curse that one person has to die for the next in line to inherit their magic will forever be Bartholomew’s legacy by the gossips of the supernatural world. A fire lit in his stomach as what was sadness about his forsaken image quickly turned to anger.

  
The plan was perfect! Belle Haven was situated on top of limestone and two powerful energy streams. The virgin’s blood should have been enough.  
He stopped that train of thought and took a mental breath. Anger got him nowhere. The witch had spent the grand majority of his time thinking about his fury, having found out early on that thinking about an emotion kept him from hearing the scratching voices and hallucinations that came with living in a box. There is nothing he could do but lay there and listen to the sounds taunt him. He let himself settle back into relaxation, clearing his mind of frustration and grievance.

  
Bartholomew’s finger moved, and whatever tenuous hold over his emotions he had quickly disappeared as his whole hand rotated once as if testing the wrist. Fear and amazement filled his body as his heart buzzed back to life. His mouth cracked open, and air rushed into the abused lungs that hadn’t been used in centuries.

  
A wave of immense power overtook Bartholomew, which forced his hands to push against the stubborn wooden plank above him. The witch’s ancient joints and bones couldn’t break through the coffin lid, so the force grew irritated and pushed harder. As his arms shot upward, he feared this power would shatter the delicate limbs he hadn’t used in three lifetimes. The board splintered above him, and despite haphazard pieces of wood that threatened to burrow into his skin, the force continued. His fingernails scraped past dirt which fell into what he was told would be his final resting place.  
Bartholomew almost fainted at the feeling of euphoria from his body moving, despite not being the one that controlled it. For so long, he waited without hope, and now he would finally get to experience everything he’d longed to see again: a sunset, a rainbow shimmering off the lake, and everything he had taken for granted.

  
His fingers breached the surface, and the force’s connection grew thin as they depleted their magic. If Bartholomew’s mouth hadn’t been pressed against the earth, he would have screamed at them. How dare they taunt him with freedom only to leave him suspended between the coffin and the air. Suddenly, the force strengthened their connection and pushed Bartholomew six feet above where he’d laid for centuries.

  
There was a time, long ago, when all he could see was red. A dark, angry throbbing energy that consumed his vision, eating through him and spitting out curses and unfulfilled threats. Then, as time passed, colors began to fade away. Not only was his experience of emotion slowly slipping from his grasp but the condemned witch was also losing everything that made him human. He decided after ten years of discussion between the voices in his head and himself, the ability to feel emotion, see colors, and have a soul were what made him human. Not an all-powerful witch, but merely, pathetically, human.

  
Bartholomew planted his hand on the ground, the feel of lush grass and the cool marble of a headstone were beneath his fingers. He pulled himself up, and his shoulder popped from its socket. Ouch, that hurt. Pain! He hadn’t felt that in ages.

  
The witch’s eyelids slowly crack open and were immediately assaulted with light emanating from purple flowers in clusters along the ground.

  
He closed his eyes, letting the air brush against the clothing that had housed his body and protected the decomposition from being exposed. He opened his eyes at the sound of a breath hitching, curious to who was the powerful person that raised him from his desolate prison.

  
The original coven stood around Bartholomew in the same cemetery they were buried in, the only thing that had changed since the 1700s was the imposing tree that stands in the center of the area. A boy stood by the grand focal point, staring at the coven with hooded lids. Bartholomew snorted, the boy looked like he could be one of them.

  
The witch’s eyes scanned the perimeter, and he flinched at the critical and disgusted eyes of three shifters, a ghost, human, and an absurd amount of witches. Where were they? There was no way this power could be from the three in front of the coven, was there? Were they witches who managed to do what they couldn’t?

“Well done, indeed, Ember.” Bartholomew turned to the man who spoke, his golden eyes with slit pupils assessed them.

  
Bartholomew’s heart rate accelerated. Did they gain death magic from the coven’s research and resurrected the witches to give them a proper thank you?

  
The man turned to a group of people directly in front of him, three teenagers dressed rather oddly. The one in the center breathed heavily and stared daggers at the man. She was beautiful, a halo of orange hair around blazing purple eyes. “It’s a shame you are burdened with that excruciating moral compass.” The girl didn’t respond, and it’s then that Bartholomew realized this tiny thing was the force he felt. Her, and the two beside her with dark hair and the same violet eyes. “But, I do admit, it helps when it comes to things like this.”

  
The man held out his palm to the group of people. Their faces are masked with confusion until a blade shifted into focus, a black one with bone-like shards protruding from a white handle. Was that the blade of Osiris?

  
The three in the center and the young boy gasp.

  
A slow smile spread out over Bartholomew’s face until he noticed the three that pour power were snarling at the man, baring their teeth as their fists clenched in unison. This didn’t appear to be a celebration of the covens’ return.

  
“You’re going to kill me and steal my magic?” The one with fire for hair accused the man. “We had a deal. You promised. You already said I can’t control your coven.”

  
Control? Bartholomew glanced to his fellow members out of the corner of his eye, trying to draw the least amount of attention to himself as possible. Did they just trade one hell for another?

  
The stylish man scoffed. “Kill you? Ember, sweets, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  
The man disappeared and the group that seemed to be against the dirty-beau turned their heads as if on swivels to look for him. A small gasp is all they needed to locate where he was, holding the girl I didn’t sense any power radiating off next to the ghost. Was she not human?

  
The girl looked panicked but didn’t struggle when the man appeared behind her, but her expression shifted to pure shock. Before anyone had time to process, the blade sunk into her back, the slick sound of flesh and the gasped breaths from the young lady turned Bartholomew’s stomach. She looked so similar to the one the coven sacrificed all those years ago. So inexperienced. So vulnerable.

  
The black of the blade stuck out from her chest, drops of dark crimson slid off of it and onto her outfit. The man petted her hair almost endearingly as the girl's eyes flicked around rapidly. “Sorry, sweets, but you have something I need.”

  
Bartholomew went to open his mouth to test his rasping voice when the girl sputtered blood, and a heavyweight of power settled over his limbs. An animancer. She was an animancer, and now he was. Bartholomew’s head spun as he processed the situation. He came back from the brink of death only to be controlled by a man with lizard eyes and an infinity scarf.


End file.
